Category Archives for "heart-centered"

Sales Success Requires Listening, Not Telling

By John Aberle | heart-centered , Sales Training

Despite sales training by generations of traditional sales trainers who emphasize the importance of a good presentation, sales success requires listening, not telling. Think about it. It’s really the old Golden Rule at work. Do you really care how good somebody’s product is before you know that the salesperson has truly heard and understood your situation and your needs? You want a solution, not a product.

Rushing to Start Telling Your Story Can Cost You a Sale

While some people are technology buffs and really care about specs (specifications), most people only care about a product or service’s ability to solve what they want. If you rush into your presentation before you deeply understand what they want and what their situation is, you risk Continue reading

Gratitude Sets the Right Attitude

By John Aberle | Gratitude , heart-centered , Sales and Marketing

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you have as wonderful a Thanksgiving as I expect to have. This is my favorite holiday of the year because the theme is so simple. As I mentioned in my title, “Gratitude sets the right attitude.”

In sales and marketing as well as in life, being happy starts with being grateful. It’s amazing how often it’s the negative experiences that teach us some important lesson, provided we are ready to listen to our inner voice. Sometimes just waiting out the apparently negative experience shows us that things really did work out better.

I recently tweeted about Jay Leno’s guest Garth Brooks singing “Unanswered Prayers.” This song is about the blessings life can give us when things don’t go as we want them to. In selling and marketing, this is so often true. If you can rise above your frustration enough to look for the lesson or the kernel of opportunity hiding in the painful event, you may find your magic bean. Don’t undervalue empathy. It’s the humbling experiences of life that make it easier for us to relate to the pains and desires of our prospects.

Thank Your Higher Power, by Whatever Name, for Life

So, for me, Thanksgiving comes down to gratitude to our Higher Power, God, Holy Spirit, Universe, The Force or whatever you call that energy which is greater than we individually are. I especially enjoy spending the day with family and sharing an abundance of delicious food, especially turkey and fixings as well as Thanksgiving’s special desserts. Dorothy even makes special pumpkin pies I can eat with Coffee-Mate instead of milk. We’ll play games afterward, including a family favorite, “Pass the Trash.”

Gratitude for My Blog’s Readers and My Community

I treasure you who read my blogs and, especially those of you who go on to join my mailing list for with you I will build a community of business people who care about selling and marketing with heart. I started this my first blog, HelpCustomersBuy.com, on November 26th, 2008 with a post for Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving message is my 141st article on heart centered, soft sell sales and marketing. My other company blogs are so much newer, but I cranked them up this year too: AberleEnterprises.com and Aberle Consulting. Thank you for reading.

I’m also thankful to Examiner.com for the opportunity to become a freelance restaurant reviewer as the Anaheim Restaurant Examiner. On September 30th, I celebrated my first year. I posted my 52nd article on Examiner.com on November 19th, 2010 with “Big Thunder Ranch serves up fabulous BBQ in a Western ranch setting.”

I am fortunate in having so many friends and loving family. I hope that you too enjoy this holiday filled with gratitude for your blessings, lessons, and gifts of this past year. If you want to be happy, remember, gratitude sets the right attitude.

If you care about selling and marketing with heart but haven’t joined my community yet, I really encourage you to sign up for Aberle Consulting list. You’ll find the box in the upper right corner of this site. Right now, I’m giving away an ecourse: 9 Steps to Finding Prospects Who Want What You Provide eBook and 9 separate lessons.

Have You Heard the MLM Lies?

By Johna11 | heart-centered , heart-centered , Sales and Marketing

First, let me say that I like MLM or multi-level marketing programs in general. Usually they sell really good products. Second, most are honorable and honest. However, some MLM lies show up when it comes to sponsoring and recruiting.

This week I was called by a woman I’d met at a seminar in March. She did a good job of refreshing my memory as to whom she is and how we met. She also got me engaged by asking questions about how the program I signed up for is going for me. Then she told me what’s going on in her world. That lead to her talking about a really incredible program for getting rich. She wanted to send me a CD that I can watch.

Three MLM Lies

Initially she was going to rely on the CD to explain the program benefits. I tried repeatedly to tell her that no matter how good it is, I’m not going to get into it right now. When I explained that I have to stay focused on my present business, she started on the three hard sell MLM lies I’ve heard from network marketers for years.

1. Everyone’s a prospect – this came up when I ask who her idea customers are.
2. It won’t take any extra time. It’s effortless. You just bring it up in a normal conversation. (In this case, I could do it in two hours a week.)
3. There’s nothing to learn. (In response to my comment that I don’t have the time.  I think it is based on the company providing videos and websites for your prospects.)

The funny thing is that as a new distributor or representative, you tend to believe this nonsense and spout it when you talk to other people. In my experience, the up-line distributor tells them that it won’t take any effort because it’s the easiest way to get your new people started. It’s not the most effective approach, though, to selling your products or services. Nevertheless, if enough newbies talk to all of their friends and families, a few will luck into someone who actually wants what they are selling. The rest of your people will get discouraged and quit so you just recruit someone new.

Everyone Isn’t a Prospect

Unless you’re selling water in the desert where there’s no public source of water, you need to understand your idea customer profile. It enables you to be efficient in your recruiting. You may still want to speak with everyone you know – but you will do it conversationally asking questions to see if there is a need or want that your program can help fill.

Hard sell salespeople focus primarily on their own needs so they can’t hear the repeat nos. While I agree that you don’t stop “selling” at the first no, until you find what your prospects want and need, you shouldn’t even be selling yet. You should be asking questions and listening.

Heart centered Multi-level Marketers Listen

If you are a heart centered, soft sell salesperson or marketer, you care about your prospects first, knowing that the sales will follow when you truly can help them get what they need to fix their problem or fulfill their desire. I have heart centered, soft sell friends in multi-level marketing who’ve approached me about their products. When I explained that I need to stay focused on my current business until it’s strong enough for me to add something else, they listen and wait until the time is right for me.

Multi-level marketing is a wonderful way to get started in your own part-time business. You can avoid getting suckered in by the MLM lies if you learn the basics about sales and marketing. You know from your own life, you’re not a prospect for every product on the market. So why did you get involved in this business? Start building an ideal customer profile as it will make it easier to find people who really will excel in business with you.

For more information on what an ideal customer profile is about check out my previous blog posts. One in particular I hope you will enjoy is “Focus Your Marketing on Your Ideal Customer.”

If Sales Calls to You Are Win-Lose Battles, Read No Further

By John Aberle | heart-centered , Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

If you like the hard sell approach, if sales calls to you are win-lose battles, then selling to help customers buy won’t work for you. Heart centered, soft sell sales and marketing is all about caring for your customers first. But don’t get misled by the term “soft” sell because soft sell is still about selling.

Difference between hard sell and soft sell

The difference between hard sell and soft sell comes down to a matter of priorities. Are you there to provide a service, to help first or is the most important element in the sale whether you get the order regardless of how well your solution works for the prospect. The service approach of helping customers buy is the heart centered, soft sell sales style. The attitude of needing to beat the prospect so as to get the order is the hard sell attitude.

Ironically, they both work some of the time. However, people who are service oriented, who really care about helping their prospects, are likely to feel a little bit of themselves shrivel up when they use the control, manipulation and pressure techniques to win at the expense of their prospect or customer.

The advantages of heart centered approach

The other irony is that, in most cases, while the heart centered approach can take longer while you probe to undercover what the real issues are and what you prospects need to fix or want to get and what it will mean to them, this is the best way to connect with them so that they know, like and trust you.

And having them know, like and trust you is the only “shortcut” to repeat sales. Customers want to feel appreciated as people, not just as wallets waiting to be picked.

If you’ve read this far, presumably sales calls to you are opportunities to connect with customers, to provide a service instead of being win-lose battles. Learn how to help customers buy. You’ll enjoy your sales profession more. In fact, you’ll find selling fun, fulfilling and mutually rewarding.

I invite you to check out my post on my consulting blog, “Do you hate selling? It’s possible to love it.” This article includes my first YouTube video talking about loving selling.

Three Heart Centered Sales and Marketing Sites

By John Aberle | Blogging , heart-centered , Sales and Marketing

If you read my previous blog, “HostGator Shines as a Host for WordPress Blog” you know that I moved this blog to HostGator. Well, I also moved Aberle Consulting to HostGator too. Then I set up my new hub site, Aberle Enterprises.

Each of these sites has related but slightly different purposes.

• Aberle Enterprises is my hub for marketing other products and services I’ve found helpful to my sales and marketing. In most cases, they will be people I feel practice heart centered and soft sell sales and marketing themselves. On occasion, I will also recommend someone who has such valuable information to impart that I will share them too even though I am not comfortable in my own mind that they are soft sell. I will do my best to caution you when that is the case and explain why I recommend them anyway.

• Remember that the defining difference between hard sell and soft sell is whether your emphasis is on the sale and commission or profit first or on helping the customer buy what he or she wants and needs with the sale coming after you understand the customer’s desires.

• I have a reading list that I’ve put into an Amazon affiliate store (aStore). I’ve annotated several of the books. Here’s my blog post about it: “Trusted Advice for Heart Centered Sales and Marketing”

• Besides books, I’ll recommend e-courses, ebooks, teleseminars, and seminars or conferences that I believe can improve your sales and marketing knowledge and skills – when applied.

• I will also market my own books and courses here. Watch for Ban Cannon Fodder in Sales Management – coming soon.

• Aberle Consulting is my site for promoting my coaching and consulting services.

• I posted my first YouTube video in “Do you hate selling? It’s possible to love it.”
• I’ll do occasional posts there too about heart centered, soft sell sales and marketing.

• This blog, Help Customers Buy, will continue to be my primary site for blogging or writing articles on heart centered, soft sell sales and marketing. In addition, I will write about social networking, social media, Internet marketing, and traditional marketing.

All three of these sites are dedicated to promoting heart centered, soft sell sales and marketing. I want to help you connect with your prospects or prospectors and customers so that you too can find selling fun, fulfilling, and mutually rewarding.

When something I share with you strikes an “ah ha” moment for you, please share it. The purpose of business is making sales. The purpose of heart centered business is listening first so as to make sales that help customers buy products and/or services which solve a problem or achieve a desired outcome. Sometimes we get lucky and do both at once. So, even though the goal of all my sites is to make sales, most people who read these articles will never become my customers unless for an occasion book referral or small purchase. In these cases especially, sharing you “ah ha” moments gives me an emotional payment. It is such a joy to know that as a writer and speaker I’ve connected.